Persons Unknown: A Richard and Judy Book Club Pick 2018. Susie SteinerЧитать онлайн книгу.

       Manon

      They cannot take their eyes off Solomon, especially Mrs Ross.

      All movement and talk swirls about them in the lounge; offers of tea, isn’t it awful, you must be devastated, but Mrs Ross doesn’t take her eyes off Solly.

      Sitting forward, on the edge of the sofa, she drinks him in as he plays with his Duplo, making a tower in order to knock it down. He is delighted by knocking things down.

      Fly is at school (Manon hopes). She has been tempted to walk him in each morning, to make certain he arrives, but stopped herself. The headmaster didn’t think it was a good strategy either. ‘You want to rebuild trust, not infantalise him,’ he said.

      For everyone else in the room, with grief as with illness, normal service has been suspended, hence the midday tea party.

      ‘Isn’t he like Jonno?’ Mrs Ross whispers to Mr Ross. (They have not offered their first names – not, Manon suspects, because they are formal, but because the moment has passed and they are not smooth operators who can re-route the social flow.)

      A smile plays about the corner of Mrs Ross’s mouth as if she dare not find happiness at a moment such as this.

      ‘The very spit,’ says Mr Ross.

      Their voices have a lovely Welsh song to them, but subtly and not all the time.

      ‘We never met you,’ Mrs Ross says, looking up at Ellie as if she is confused by the way in which Ellie and Jon-Oliver had this child, without marrying or meeting the parents.

      ‘Where are your people?’ Mr Ross asks. He holds his tea with one hand under the mug’s base. Thick hands.

      ‘Our dad’s in Scotland,’ Manon says. She is about to say, ‘With our stepmother Una,’ but it is all wrong. There is nothing of the mother in Una. Instead she says, ‘Mum died when we were kids – teenagers.’

      ‘Oh how terrible for you,’ says Mrs Ross.

      ‘Yes, it was,’ says Manon.

      Mr and Mrs Ross have gone back to drinking Solly in, as if they can soak up enough of him to take back to Wales.

      ‘You’ll have to visit us,’ Mr Ross says. ‘We’ve got a tractor, Solomon. Do you like tractors? I could take you on a ride in it.’

      Sol looks up at his grandfather. Manon has been observing her nephew and he seems to have got around the difficulty of this social occasion by ignoring these elderly interlopers entirely. But the tractor is too much. He is awed by chunky vehicles. Manon has become accustomed to screeching to a halt in the car and bellowing, ‘DIGGER!’ She’s even found herself doing this when no one is strapped into the back seat.

      ‘Yes,’ Mr Ross is saying, and his whole face crinkles in a most kindly way, ‘a real tractor. Brum brum! Would you like that, Solly?’

      ‘Trac-tor,’ says Solly. He swills words, like a wine taster. ‘Too-day’ and ‘birf-day’ and ‘Babe Buntin’ when they’re reading Each Peach Pear Plum.

      ‘Trac-tor,’ says Mrs Ross, with a look of wonderment. ‘Oh he’s wonderful,’ she says to Ellie. ‘You are wonderful,’ she says to Solly.

      Ellie smiles at them but Manon thinks it is brittle. Then Ellie leaves the room. She has not sat down since they arrived, first making the tea, searching for biscuits, asking where they’d like to sit, plumping cushions, offering to open or close windows, put the fire on. In and out of the room. It has reached such a pitch of fidgetry that Manon is concerned her sister is being rude. As Ellie makes for the door, she hisses, ‘Can’t you sit down for one fucking minute?’

      ‘Fresh pot,’ Ellie says.

      Manon frowns, nods at the olds. Perhaps it is next to the Rosses’ stillness that Ellie seems manic and incapable of contemplation.

      ‘She’s off again!’ Manon says to the room, as Ellie bustles out with the teapot.

      Sol starts to fuss and whine. Mrs Ross immediately pitches onto her knees on the floor next to him, proffering him another block for his tower.

      ‘You really should stay here with us,’ Manon says. ‘It’d be no trouble.’

      ‘We don’t like to be a burden,’ says Mr Ross. ‘It’s a nice place, where we’re staying. Mrs Linton, she cooked a full English this morning. Not that we felt like it. We’ll go home tomorrow, I think. Police – well,’ he nods at Manon, ‘you’ll know better than me. But they can’t see a reason for us to hang on.’

      The double meaning of those last words seems to suspend in the silence that follows.

      Solly’s whining is increasing, harder to mollify because really, he needs a nap but doesn’t always take one (Ellie and Manon are clinging on, resolutely putting him to bed at lunchtime in the vain hope of retaining their midday hiatus). Sol is doubly exhausted by all the tension between the adults; tired from being lapped up by his grief-stricken stranger-grandparents.

      ‘I’m going to have to put this one to bed in a minute,’ says Ellie, bustling back in with the teapot.

      ‘I think we’ll go back for a nap too, Gareth, shall we?’ says Mrs Ross. ‘We didn’t sleep much last night.’

      ‘Won’t you have a fresh cup first?’ asks Ellie.

      ‘No thank you,’ says Mrs Ross. They have risen. ‘I wish I’d brought him a present. I didn’t know …’

      ‘No need for presents,’ Ellie says, stiffly.

      ‘You will let us see him, won’t you?’ Mrs Ross says. ‘We don’t expect anything from you, only to see him and to get to know him. We can help you, in holidays and things. It can’t be easy, having him on your own. Although I know you’ve got …’ She trails off.

      Ellie blusters her way through the departures, avoiding eye contact. ‘Well, it was nice to meet you.’

      Busying herself with Solly.

      Hiding behind Solly.

      Manon cannot understand it. These are visibly good people in search of a connection.

      ‘What the fuck was that all about?’ she says, after the front door has closed and after a respectful beat of silence so the Rosses can be safely out of earshot.

      Ellie has Sol on her hip, stroking his forehead.

      ‘Language,’ Ellie says. ‘I’m going to put him down.’

      ‘My not tired,’ says Solly, through the oval of a yawn.